


Follow Me To Reward Or Ruin

by raendown



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 04:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13826823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: Tobirama's plans to keep Madara in the village are obvious yet unexpected. Everyone sees it but no one believes it.





	Follow Me To Reward Or Ruin

Years of working and living so close to her two cousins had given Touka the ability to tell all of Hashirama’s many sighs apart from each other. The one she’d just heard drifting out of the storeroom she’d passed a moment ago was most definitely the I’m-very-worried-about-my-brother sigh and for a moment she wondered if it was worth getting herself involved. All sorts of wild shenanigans could be set in motion with just a teensy bit of curiosity in the wrong place.

With a sigh of her own, Touka turned her steps around and reached for the door of the storeroom. That was one of his more sincere sighs and it usually meant that something was actually wrong. If the matter wasn’t very serious he would probably have used his the-world-is-confusing-and-out-to-get-me sigh. Or maybe the it’s-for-your-own-good-I-swear sigh. Had it been either of those she wouldn’t have even considered stopping.

Hauling the door open, she found Hashirama wedged in to the far corner of the tiny little closet, his arms folded on the sill of the small window and his face morose as he stared down at something on the ground below. 

“Tell me what’s got your panties twisted,” she demanded with little finesse. Unfazed by her typical bluntness, Hashirama release a puff of air that shifted his fringe. 

“Something is wrong with Brother,” he said. “I can’t figure out what he’s trying to do but I’m worried that he’s hurting himself again.”

“Hurting himself?” 

Frowning, Touka marched over and squeezed herself in next to her cousin, blithely ignoring Hashirama’s squawk of protest as he was unceremoniously shoved aside. She looked out through the window and scanned the world outside until a clump of white hair caught her eye and she glared down at Tobirama, trying to guess at what the hell was going on. 

The first thing she noticed was how insane he looked with his hair all sticking up like that and she wondered if he’d even noticed. Second she noticed how oddly he was behaving. All of his body language was just slightly off, very unlike his usual poised self, as he strutted around a very uncomfortable looking Madara. The two of them appeared to be trading quips and insults – not all that uncommon – and Touka squashed her face up against the window while she stared harder, trying to decipher was Hashirama was talking about.

“Hurting himself how?” she asked because while he never deliberately meant to do it, there were a lot of ways Tobirama had hurt himself in the past. 

“I don’t think he’s sleeping and I’m pretty sure he had more than three pots of coffee before I even got up this morning. He’s got some kind of idea in his head and you know how he gets when he can’t put something down.”

Rather than reply Touka only nodded. She did know, all too well. Tobirama was well-known in their clan for his manic episodes when he seemed to stop functioning until he had worked through some problem or another. 

“Any idea what it is this time?” 

Hashirama shook his head beside her. “Only that it has something to do with Madara. Tobi just won’t leave him alone lately.”

Touka hummed and tilted her head, trying to think outside the box the way her younger cousin might. He always came up with crazy ideas that no one else would conceive of and so she challenged herself to think of the most out-there, nonsense reason she possibly could.

From up here it almost looked like Tobirama was  _flirting_  with the older man but she immediately dismissed the idea as soon as it entered her mind. Not a chance was that actually the case. He had to have something more important up his sleeve than seducing his greatest enemy. What possible reason could he have for that? It made no sense. No, she was just going to have to keep thinking and maybe watch him a little more closely until she had figured out what was going on. 

-

Madara prided himself on being a smart man, no matter what impression his temper gave to others. He was a better politician that many would think, a genius of battlefield tactics, and he could run circles around most of the mathematicians he had met, much to his own smug delight. 

The one area in which his intellect regularly failed him, the one area he desperately needed some insight on right now, was interpersonal relationships. He and Tobirama had hated each other right from the moment they met and nothing about that had changed in the handful of years since their two clans had finally made peace and started a village together. Now things were  _different_  in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. Something strange was happening between the two of them that he just couldn’t define and it bothered him every time they came face to face. 

Like now. Madara narrowed his eyes at Tobirama and turned the younger man’s last comment over inside his mind, picking it apart. He was certain there was some sort of innuendo meant there but whether he was being threatened or not remained to be seen.

“I’m sure this conversation would be much more satisfying for both of us if you would just say whatever it is you want from me,” he growled, tired of playing games. Tobirama’s lips quirked up in a smirk that was jagged around the edges. 

“ _So_  many things, Madara. I want so many things from you.” 

“Well then?”

“And, believe me, all of them would most definitely satisfy.” 

“You’re still making no sense.”

Madara strained to keep a lid on his temper as Tobirama laughed. The sound of it was low and rumbling, like rock sliding downhill in the distance, and he thought he should have found it much more grating than he did. Had Tobirama’s laugh always had such an oddly pleasant sound? What a strange thing to notice. 

“If you’re not going to make any sense then just leave me alone. I do have things I’m supposed to be doing; I can’t spend my entire day wasting time here with you. Especially if you’re not going to say anything useful.” 

“You’ll come back though.” Tobirama’s body was moving strangely as he turned, not at all his usual prowling movements. “I always make sure to keep them coming back for more.” With that last confusing statement he walked away, hips swaying from side to side as though he were fighting to keep his balance. For whatever reason, Madara couldn’t stop watching. 

He could have tried to stop the other from leaving, yelled at him to stay and demanded that he confess more clearly what it was he was up to. Something inside him held him back from doing so, some half-formed thought in the back of his mind that told him he wasn’t really prepared to deal with whatever it was just yet. By the way he couldn’t seem to peel his eyes away from the subtle shifting under the hem of that ridiculous blue kimono shirt, Madara agreed with that half buried thought. Perhaps something was wrong with  _both_  of them. He must not be feeling well if he was accidentally staring at Tobirama’s rear. 

When he realized just how long he’d been standing there watching the other man walk away, Madara huffed and forced himself to stop, turning around and purposefully setting off in the direction he had originally meant to go. Tobirama and his strange behavior seemed to be on Madara’s mind a lot lately and that needed to stop. He shouldn’t be wasting so much time and energy on a bastard like that. 

It was just such an intriguing mystery, though. If he didn’t know better he would almost think that Tobirama was trying to seduce him. 

Good thing he knew better.

-

Jittering hands reached for the freshly brewed pot of coffee as soon as he entered his workshop and Tobirama gave a lusty sigh of satisfaction at the taste of his favorite drink. No one else brewed coffee just the way he liked it. 

After downing most of the cup in one go he refilled it and sank down in to the seat at his work bench. Papers were strewn every which way, most of them covered in his own rushed handwriting. Without looking at it, he very carefully covered up the one paper filled with nothing but a drawing in his own hand which he would rather no one else stumble upon. It would ruin all of his carefully laid plans if anyone were to carry tales about this to the subject of said drawing.

He was so close he could practically taste it. Everything was going exactly how he had imagined it. By the end of the month he would have Uchiha Madara’s undivided attention and after that it would take very little to push him over the edge in to a physical relationship of some sort. Beyond that his plans were admittedly a little fuzzy but Tobirama knew himself well enough to know that when the time came he would be prepared for anything. 

What was important was that Madara seemed less flighty lately, less prone to dark silences when he would stare out the window with a thoughtful expression, his eyes scanning the horizon. Instead his thoughts appeared to be turned inward now, staying within the village borders where they should be. 

If only he had thought of this a long time ago Tobirama just knew he could have saved himself a lot of headaches and sleepless nights. No more would he have to worry about the safety of the village and the innocent people who had chosen to live here. No more would he have to worry about his poor brother’s heart breaking, losing the other half of his childhood dream. It no longer seemed imminent that Madara might abandon the village and everything they had all worked so hard to build.

Rubbing his hands together briefly, Tobirama reached for his coffee and drained half the cup again before setting it aside and taking up his pencil. Just because everything was going the way he wanted it to right now didn’t mean he should take it easy and stop planning for the future. There were a lot of “what ifs” he hadn’t made contingency plans for yet.

Falling back in to his plans with ease, Tobirama snickered to himself since there was no one else there to hear him. He almost couldn’t believe how easy it had been so far. He was a genius. An absolute genius. 

He should have thought to seduce Madara  _years_  ago. 

 


End file.
